Dr Luca Magri

Research interestsAviation is responsible for around 3.5 % of anthropogenic climate change, including both CO2 and NOx induced effects, growing up to 15 % of the total contribution by 2050 if action is not taken. The Advisory Council for Aerospace Research in Europe has set the industry two main targets for 2020: 80 % cut in NOx and 50 % reduction in noise. To reduce NOx emissions, cleaner aeronautical gas turbines are designed to burn in a lean regime. The downside is that lean flames burn very unsteadily, which causes two unwanted phenomena: combustion noise and thermo-acoustic instabilities. Both phenomena are unwanted and need to be minimized during the design or controlled if they occur.
Key to my approach for design and control is the use of inverse computational methods based on adjoint algorithms, which enable the calculation of the systems sensitivity with backward-in-time simulations, and mathematical methods from chaos theory, quantum mechanics and stochastic theories.
My vision is that future generations of engineering Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools will be designed to perform sensitivity analysis and optimization on the fly. With a better design, the new aeroengines will be cleaner, healthier and quieter.
Key words: Reacting fluid dynamics, Combustion noise, Aero-Thermo-acoustics, Sensitivity and optimization, Multiple-scale methods, Uncertainty quantification, Adjoint methods, Chaos, Inverse design